An easy pill to swallow

Sarah coughed, the acrid air of the South Side clung to her throat like a scarf. Even three floors up, the smog filtered through old holes in the brick of tiny apartment. It was a constant reminder of the sprawling megafactories downwind. Each of her coughs reverberated through her whole body, causing her ribs to ache. It was less of an illness at this point and more of a sentence.

With a great reluctance she grabbed her neural headset and logged into DiagnosiX. She hated the sterile interface and the way the chatbot feigned empathy, but everyone swore that it was more accurate than any human physician. Besides, at 2AM her options were limited.

She entered a few symptoms that wouldn’t narrow it down — the fatigue in her bones and the intense bouts of wheezing. As she typed there was a third that she hadn’t intended to include, the tremors in her hands. Did she really want a diagnosis or was she afraid of the truth? She entered it in anyway.

DiagnosiX never spat out a simple diagnosis. It churned and built a case, stacking clinical terms together like an accusatory detective.